So Matt our drummer used to run gigs at Maidenheads best alternative bar by far back in the day, a bar where the softest thing on the jukebox was Slipknot, and the Friday night anthem was 5 minutes alone by Pantera! I am of course talking about The Hobgoblin, Maidenhead.
A lifeline for the alternative crowd of Maidenhead, the Hobgoblin was unreal! It was inclusive for the outcasts and weirdos, the socially anxious metal heads that just wanted to drink whiskey and coke and bang there heads to some metal, but most of all it was a SERIOUS alternative community where everyone knew everyone, with a collective love of one thing… alternative music!
Matt (drummer) worked at the Hobgoblin for some years and in his time there, his love for live music saw the creation of one of Maidenheads best weekend music events of the year for alternative bands from far and wide…. HOBFEST! Plastered over three days the event saw 5 great years, with over 40 bands across the weekend, with some pretty hefty names featuring on the bill! Divine Chaos, Tankus The Henge and Mr B – The Gentleman Rhymer to name a few! ‘The Hob’ was THE place to be for live alternative music.
So, it was an extremely great pleasure to be playing back at The Maidens Head (as it is now called) last weekend and although the stage has moved from the back to the front, and is some what less of a production than Matt’s Hobfest, the atmosphere and the party vibe at the pub is still alive and kicking!
So, we’re in, we’re setup, and although we have no sound engineer running our desk, we managed to hash our way into sounding somewhat like a professional live band! A few tweaks on the desk and some feedback (see what I did there) from the audience, and we are up and running, and sounding good!
We open our set with one of our favourite Blink 182 songs to play and listen to, The Rock Show, which has a fast paced tempo to get the audience in the mood and give them a taste of what we are all about! This always goes down well as an opener as it’s one of Blinks most popular songs, and a favourite among many. The crowd are digging it and the doors are flapping open with ‘off the street traffic’ to pop in and see what the racket is about!
We played for an hour, had a quick break in which time we worked the crowd with our FREE HAT giveaway draw which many were interested to take part in, and managed to bag some social media followers in the process, winner!
Back to it for another hour we go, starting the second set with Blink 182’s – All The Small Things and now we have a bit more beer flowing, and some more liquid courage so you can imagine the floor is now full of the karaoke lovers belting out bangers like ‘Jimmy Eat Worlds – The Middle’ which is another favourite of ours to play! Set 2 is going OFF!!
We try to create a show that builds into a classic band finale, getting our audience more and more excited until we give them a total classic to end the set, and really get their feet moving, so this show we landed on Fallout Boy – Sugar We’re Going Down which is ALWAYS a great motivator for those who may have peaked a little early haha! Boom! Crowd goes nuts, we smash the set and everyone is super happy which left the band on a massive high. What an absolute joy it is to be gigging back in our old favourite place, playing our favourite songs!
But before we depart the stage, after being thrown various chants for an encore! We like to push the boundaries of taste and bring Matt off the drums to play some guitar (his first instrument) to a classic, yet controversial cover of Tenacious D’s – F#*k Her Gently! The crowd in true form, can’t help but take the vocals and belt the WHOLE song out for us, what a perfect end to an amazing set!!
So! We are still beaming from our performance at The Maidens Head, we were so very well looked after by the team at the pub, shown massive respect and even complimented on our song choice and performance, which as a rising group of
artists, are all chuffed to bits to hear! So Thank you to the team at The Maidens Head, the wonderful people that came to see us and gave us some terrific feedback, to the dancers, the singers, and the winners of our giveaway…. Thank you!
We would like to thank, and give a huge shoutout to the team at The Maidens Head for being so welcoming with us, helping out with anything we needed, even delivering drinks to the stage! They were truely apleasure to work with!
We would also like to thank Matt Bond for giving us the opportunity to play the show, without your support we would not be playing shows!
We play the Maidens Head again on July 19th where we will have had a lot more songs added to our setlist so make sure to come down and see us, you’ll get great music, a great atmosphere, and could even win some merch!!
